Sun Tzu - The Art of War

In the XX-th century, the occidentals got to know one of the most important books of the Chinese culture, called “Sun Tzu – The Art of War”. The book is a treaty of strategy, talking about how should behave the state and it’s generals in case of war, involving Chinese values, but applying conceptions that became valid for the occidental world in domains like marketing, negotiation, communication, etc, meaning in the competitive situations. It continued to influence the military strategies, being included in the libraries of every single unity, by the Government of the United States of America, for a continuous formation.


It is believed that Sun Tzu lived between the VI-th and the V-th century B.C. (or between 400 – 320) and he was a great general, strategist, and philosopher. The book became noted in China in a moment of crisis, when the governments were raising and falling, and had the purpose to maintain order in a moment of chaos. Although the teachings in the book are associated to the same general, they say the book was wrote by four of his officials, which knew by close the ideas of the legendary strategist.

The main idea of the book is that in a war the most important thing is winning, and the winner will be that who will plan his battles in order to obtain the best results in a shorter time with a minimum of losses, and the greatest winning of all is winning without fighting, because is the perfect way to respect the initial conditions: the time involved is minimum and the human losses don’t exist. The spies have an important part, because they allow you to know the moves that your adversary make, in the same time they offer him false information about your own moves. During war, the most important thing is being unpredictable and careful.

Sun Tzu does not promote only courage, but most of all the wisdom of the generals and of the officials on the battlefield, their capacity of training the troupes and make them respond to the orders. The orders must be clear, concise, understood by everyone, but the general will have the right to not respond to all of his king’s orders, if he considers them harmful for his troupes or for winning the battle. A general that commands the withdrawing of his troupes is not considered to be a coward, if he had good reasons of strategy for taking that decision.

For downloading the book in PDF format